Disclaimer: While the following guidelines cannot cover every situation, by using them and applying some good old fashioned common sense you will find your experience in this forum, and all the rest of the forums for that matter, a much more pleasurable and productive experience.

1. When asking questions about your car please provide year, make, model, engine size, and transmission type as a minimum. Of course any other pertinent information will be needed as well for example, if you have trouble with an inoperative window we need to know if they’re power or manual and knowing if it’s a two or four door may be helpful as well.

2. If there have been any repairs or maintenance performed on the car recently, this may be important so let us know. Also, if there is any past history of this or a related problem let us know that along with what was done to resolve it in the past.

3. Do not assume we know what you know or what you mean to say. We are more than willing to help but can only use the information you provide. Because we are online in a forum, we cannot see your face, hear the inflection in your voice or see, touch or hear your car. You are our eyes and ears and solving any problem begins with you and the effort you are willing to put forth helping us to help you. This brings us to…

4. The description. Please do not interpret what is going on with your car, just give us an explicit, step by step description. We need to know anything that might be a factor such as engine hot or cold, vehicle speed, weather conditions, etc. There are too many possibilities to name them all but you get the idea. Also, if you have already had the foresight to retrieve computer codes (in instances were that is helpful) let us know what they are. If you tell us you think it needs sparkplugs then your answer will be put in sparkplugs. Keep in mind if you knew what was wrong you probably wouldn’t be here asking for advice.

5. Another assumption you should never make. We don’t know who you are or what your mechanical ability is, your knowledge level or what type of tools, equipment or work area you have. Some repairs require very little knowledge but are labor, equipment and space intensive. Other repairs require very little actual work but you’ll need a large amount of experience or technical knowledge. Most repairs are somewhere in between. Help us out by honestly assessing what you can and cannot do and let us know. Claiming to have a higher knowledge level than you do is not only frustrating and counter productive for everyone involved, it’s also extremely transparent to those who have that knowledge and only serves to make you look like a fool.

6. Finally introduce yourself. There is a section here at Car-Forums.com called “Introduce Yourself”. We don’t need your name, age, address, social security number and date of birth although if you want to share those details feel free to do so. It is nice however to know a little bit about the person who we’re trying to help. And honestly if you don’t have the time to type a few sentences about yourself, then we don’t have the time to help you. Remember you came to us looking for our years of knowledge, training and experience.

I think that about covers it. Welcome to the Car-Forums.com Repairs and Maintenance section. We hope you enjoy your stay.

__________________Thanks for the pic, jedimario.

"Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, use that something to support their own existence."Frank Vincent Zappa, 1940-1993